Dallas’ Mothership rocked my world with their very solid self-titled debut album back in 2013. The album was a rollicking stoner metal affair, filled with all of the trappings (good and bad) of that genre. Although I gave the album a 4/5 at that time, looking back I probably rated it a bit too highly simply because the good songs on it were REALLY good. Here we are roughly a year later and the band is back with their sophomore album and before listening to it, I was hopeful that the band had gotten even better.

Well, after listening to MOTHERSHIP II a ton over the last month or so, I’m happy to report that the band is firing on all cylinders, better than ever! Mothership’s groovy, swampy, stoner metal is intact and the band has refined their song writing craft to make this album stomp the hell out of their debut. Although the band had some spacey, quiet moments on the debut, they were often dull, typical of this genre. On this album, the boys have written some great quiet moments, like the slow build-up of lead track “Celestial Prophet”, or the all-instrumental “Tamu Massif”, which, despite its six-minute length, never gets boring.

Based on the band’s debut, I expected the heavy tracks on this album to rock my face off, and Mothership do not disappoint! The funny “Shanghai Surprise” is probably the heaviest, fastest track on the album, but the band has filled II with brilliant riffs in every song, even rocking the hell out of old blues chestnut “Good Morning Little School Girl”.

Boil all of the elements down and you get an album that is better in almost every way than their already excellent debut record. Congratulations guys, and long live!